A Kibbutz's Mizrahi: Amnon Shamosh's "Name of the Author" and the Israeli Consensus

• In Event: Contemporary Mizrahi Identities

Abstract

In November 2015, renowned Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua publicly felicitated his colleague, Syrian-Israeli author Amnon Shamosh, for the latter's new novel about Alzheimer's disease. This was one of Shamosh's few literary pieces not to center on Mizrahi Jews, their history, heritage, and everyday experience in Israel; it mainly touched upon Shamosh's personal struggle with his wife's deteriorating mental state. However, Yehoshua opted to open his greetings by saying, "I admire this man, who knows how to combine Mizrahiness with Israeliness. Not an angry, belligerent Mizrahiness, but a colorful one". What did Yehoshua, a canonical author and Sephardi Jew himself, mean by these observations?
This paper uses the Foucauldian notion of 'Name of the Author' to examine the manners in which seldom researched author, Amnon Shamosh functions in the literary and cultural discourse of Israel in the 1970s and early 1980s, focusing on his famous 1978 novel – adapted to television in 1982 – MICHAEL EZRA SAFRA AND SONS. This popular novel, initially rejected by all major publishing houses in Israel, tells the tale of Aleppo's wealthy Safra family throughout the 20th century, as historical circumstances gradually force it to leave its beloved city, sending one part of the family to Israel and other to South America. Shamosh claims that the novel redeems the image of the Israeli Mizrahi family and its members, portraying educated and proud Mizrahi subjects. Yet, a close reading reveals that the novel actually demonstrates the ways in which the Mizrahi subject is forced to shed his/her Arabic traits inasmuch as he/she approaches the Israeli mainstream and consensus. Much as, it seems, Shamosh himself had to do. Using three geographic spheres – the exile, the Israeli urban space and the kibbutz – the novel depicts three possible ethnic modes of existence of Israeli Mizrahi, who is forced to surrender layers of Arab heritage as he/she approaches the Holy Mecca of Isrealiness, the kibbutz.
The investigation of Shamosh's biography, his literary techniques and narrative and the acceptance of his writings, leads to some intriguing conclusions regarding past and current possibilities of Mizrahi authorship in Israel; including Shamosh's own. What type of Arab-Jewish narrative is the Israeli consensus willing to accept, and why?

Lital Abazon, PhD. candidate
Department of Comparative Literature
Yale University
Lital.abazon@yale.edu

Author

• Lital Abazon, Yale University